Sherlock Holmes: Facts About the Fictional Detective | Primary Facts Sherlock Holmes: Facts About the Fictional Detective Posted on by James • 2 Comments Here are some facts about Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes was a popular fictional detective who featured in books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle . He has become by far the best known literary detective ever created. Holmes appeared in 4 long stories and 56 short stories written by Doyle. Doyle became tired of his creation, killing him off in 1893, but then bringing him back to life due to public complaints. Sherlock Holmes was probably based on a real person, a forensic science lecturer named Joseph Bell. The Holmes books themselves influenced the development of forensic science. Holmes has also been portrayed in dozens of films, and is the character most often portrayed in films. He has been portrayed by Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing and Jeremy Brett. In the books, Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street in London , along with his assistant Dr. Watson. At that address today is a Sherlock Holmes museum where letters are received daily asking for Holmes’ help. The first Sherlock Holmes long story was A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887.

The first short story was A Scandal in Bohemia, published in The Strand magazine in 1891. Sherlock Holmes is a master of disguise, an expert boxer and swordsman and he can play the violin . However, he has no knowledge of politics, literature or astronomy. Holmes does not wear a deerstalker hat in the stories, despite many illustrations showing this. Neither does he say his most famous phrase of “Elementary, my dear Watson” in the books. In Sherlock, a British TV series, Sherlock Holmes (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) and Dr Watson (played by Martin Freeman) solve crimes in present-day London. The dates of Holmes’ birth and date are never clear in the original books. Holmes retired to the Sussex coast to keep bees and to write a book about bee keeping. There are statues of Sherlock Holmes in both Edinburgh and London. London also has a Sherlock Holmes hotel and pub, as well as streets named after Holmes and Watson.

The Case of the Aging Sleuths and the Dying Detectives | The Huffington Post The Case of the Aging Sleuths and the Dying Detectives 05/19/2014 01:36 pm ET | Updated Jul 19, 2014 130 Max Allan Collins Author The great fictional detectives of the last century seldom aged and almost never died. There were exceptions -- Sherlock Holmes and Mike Hammer both (apparently) died, when their creators grew tired of them. But when the public demanded, those deaths became as exaggerated as the reports about Mark Twain's passing (you remember Twain -- author of Tom Sawyer, Detective?). You can write if off to simpler times, but it makes good storytelling and commercial sense even today to keep popular detectives frozen in amber. Readers of series fiction come back to spend time with characters they know, familiarity breeding not contempt, but comfort. None of this character growth stuff, and a hero dying? Out of the question. Agatha Christie cheerfully ignored Hercule Poirot's obvious old age, and wasn't Miss Marple born a spinster?

Of course, Christie prided herself on unpredictability, and she did kill off Poirot, but only in a novel she squirreled away in a safe-deposit box, for publication after her passing. Maybe it says something that Miss Jane Marple does not die in her similarly set-aside final series entry. Erle Stanley Gardner not only kept Perry Mason frozen for 40 years, he depicted Los Angeles in as non-specific a manner as possible, keeping not only defense attorney Mason, super-secretary Della Street, and indefatigable PI Paul Drake ageless, but the world around them, too. Gardner wanted to keep the novels timeless, so they could stay in print forever -- for many decades, he got his wish. Teen detective Nancy Drew stayed static as well, although those who controlled her destiny began in the late 1950s to update the older novels and their illustrations, removing for a lot of readers the charm of their 1930s origins -- running boards, seamed stockings and all. Perhaps the most eccentric approach can be found in Rex Stout's wonderful Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin series.

Stout kept Wolfe constantly in his mid-fifties and Archie in his early thirties, though the world around them changes, from a post-Prohibition setting in Fer-De-Lance (1934) to J. Edgar Hoover's decline in The Doorbell Rang (1965). The final few novels even include references to Vietnam and Watergate. Most outrageously, a character from Too Many Cooks (1938) returns 26 years older in A Right to Die (1964), while Wolfe and Archie remain untouched by time. Mickey Spillane did not shy away from making it clear, even in novels written in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, that Mike Hammer was a proud veteran of World War II. He avoided stating Hammer's age, however, and dealt metaphorically with issues of aging by beginning several novels with a weakened Hammer. In The Girl Hunters, Hammer has been on a seven-year bender; in Black Alley (1996) and the posthumous Kiss Her Goodbye (2011), Hammer returns to New York after recuperating from near fatal wounds.

In the current King of the Weeds , which I completed from Mickey's partial manuscript and notes, Spillane more openly addresses the passage of time. Both Hammer and his cop pal Pat Chambers are facing imminent retirement, and the case at hand has roots in the start of their careers. The successor to Spillane's crown as king of private eye writers, Robert B. Parker, followed Stout's lead and his detective Spenser, a Korean War veteran, was kicking bad guy butt well into the twenty-first century. Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone started out at age 32, but the author ages her sleuth two-and-a-half years per book, pledging never to foist a menopausal Kinsey on her readers. Lee Child's Jack Reacher aged for a while, but the author, sensing rough patches ahead, put on the brakes. Patricia Cornwell has done the same with Kay Scarpetta, and John Sandford with Harry Davenport. Other mystery masters have chosen to keep the clock ticking for their protagonists.

Lawrence Block says that his Matthew Scudder is in his seventies (and has set a recent novel in the 1980s accordingly), and Michael Connelly cops to Harry Bosch being 60. James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux is in his seventies (but fit) while Burke's other character, Sheriff Hackberry Holland, is pushing 80. Bill Pronzini's "Nameless" detective and Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone have grown older, and Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins has, too. Among other aging detectives are Ian Rankin's John Rebus, Ruth Rendell's Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, and J.A. Jance's Seattle homicide investigator, J.P. Beaumont. This more realistic approach seems ever-more widespread in the genre, and there are many other examples. In my Nathan Heller series, I knew I would be moving up through history. So in True Detective (1983), where he deals with Chicago Mayor Cermak and Al Capone, Nate is 27. But in the recent Kennedy Trilogy (Bye Bye, Baby; Target Lancer; and Ask Not), Heller is in his early sixties.

And for the first time in these memoirs, the character's death is acknowledged: Nate tells us the JFK material can't be published till after he's gone. A surprising number of readers have bemoaned Heller's "death" -- though for him to be alive today, he would rival Hercule Poirot's "real" age. But perhaps that's why so few mystery writers have unequivocally ended the lives of their protagonists. Readers experience something very personal with the best of the fictional detectives, and while practitioners of the craft going all the way back to Conan Doyle may wish to move on, readers often are happy right where they are. In the line-up that follows are several sleuths whose creators showed them no mercy, as well as several famous detectives who managed to age more or less realistically. Sherlock Holmes Tiring of his own creation, Conan Doyle famously killed off the greatest of all fictional detectives by hurling him from a mountainous cliff into a waterfall in The Final Problem (1893).

But there are clues that Doyle always intended to bring Holmes back –- the ambiguity of the consulting detective’s death, for one, and the publication of a certain “lost episode” called The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901) for another. Since most of the stories are presented as memoirs written by Dr. John H. Watson, Holmes has a more specifically fixed career than most fictional sleuths, from roughly 1880 to 1914. Holmes lives eternally in Victorian London with its fog, Hansom cabs and gas lights, but Doyle reported his detective’s retirement to a farm to keep bees (around 1903), and his final case on the eve of the first World War in His Last Bow (August 1914). Perry Mason Erle Stanley Gardner set the adventures of defense attorney Perry Mason in a vaguely contemporary Los Angeles, avoiding any references that would date the novels. Mason’s private life is largely a blank slate, although a romantic relationship with his secretary Della Street is implied. The wildly successful Perry Mason TV series (1957-1966), however, hinged on Raymond Burr’s iconic portrayal.

When Burr undertook a 1985 TV movie, Perry Mason Returns, an older Mason stepped down as a judge to defend his former secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale, as identified in her role as Burr in his), with William Katt appearing as Paul Drake, Jr. (the original Drake, William Hopper, having passed away in 1970). Twenty-five Mason TV-movies followed, with Burr’s intention of concluding with the marriage of Mason and Street undone by his 1993 passing. Mike Hammer A pop-culture phenomenon, Mickey Spillane’s controversial tough detective was –- in an echo of Conan Doyle -– badly wounded and left to his apparent death in a burning building in Kiss Me, Deadly (1952). (Spillane had converted to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and had not intended to write further Hammer stories.) Hammer was a WW II combat vet with a specific age implied, and his return in The Girl Hunters (1962) finds him a battered mess after a seven-year drunk following the apparent death of his beloved secretary, Velda.

Hammer appears to age through the writer’s sporadic later novels, though he would literally be in his seventies by Black Alley (1996). In the posthumously published penultimate Hammer novel, King of the Weeds, Hammer is contemplating retirement, as is his longtime police pal, Pat Chambers. Hercule Poirot Agatha Christie made few missteps in a career that can only be envied by any other mystery writer then or now. But she admitted a major one by “making Poirot so old” –- the effete, fastidious retired Belgian police officer is apparently 62 in his debut, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920, set in 1916). That would make him 118 in the final Poirot novel written during Dame Agatha’s lifetime (Elephants Can Remember, 1972). Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case (1975) finds him in old age and ailing in the post-war 1940s, although the novel was written in the early ‘40s, to be published only after Christie’s death (she allowed publication shortly before her death).

The long-running, excellent UK television adaptations with the definitive screen Poirot, David Suchet, wisely kept their version of Curtain vaguely in ‘40s period. Inspector Morse Good though Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse novels are, the long-running UK TV series made the deeper impression. Starring John Thaw as the lovably cranky Morse and Kevin Whately as his working-class sergeant Lewis, 33 movie-length episodes were made, including adaptations of Dexter’s thirteen novels. Morse is a lover of opera and classic cars and crossword puzzles, given to hunches more than deduction, and lent great humanity by Thaw’s performance. The film of Dexter’s The Remorseful Day depicts Morse’s declining health and eventual death, a loss beautifully enacted by Whately and intensified by Thaw’s own death shortly thereafter. A sequel series follows Whately as an aging Lewis, and the current prequel series Endeavour (Morse’s long held-back first name), with Shaun Evans as the young Morse, is set in the mid-‘60s. Kurt Wallander Henning Mankell’s 10 Inspector Wallander novels represent a kind of Swedish take on Morse.

Wallander, too, loves opera, drinks too much, and is grumpy. But this glum detective isn’t warmed up by a father-and-son relationship like the one Morse enjoys with Lewis. Like Morse, Wallander has difficulty forging lasting relationships with women, although he was once married and has a daughter with whom he suffers a rocky relationship. As he ages, diabetes sets in and by the end of his career (The Troubled Man, 2009), Wallander suffers from Alzheimer’s. Kurt Wallander has been successfully translated to television in a recent BBC series starring Kenneth Branagh following on two successful Swedish TV series with Rolf Lasgard and Krister Henrikssen respectively. Author Mankill contributed original stories to the Henrikssen series. Veronica Mars Unlike the other detectives here, Veronica Mars does not emanate from novels, although the character was clearly conceived as a modern-day variation on Nancy Drew, right down to Veronica’s father being a PI. But the sharply written series was also meant to be a contemporary take on the private eye genre, and Neptune, California, seems not so far from Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles.

Television sleuths don’t have the non-aging option of literary detectives, and the original Mars three-season run saw feisty Kristen Bell’s Veronica go from high school to college. In the Kickstarter-funded follow-up film, Veronica –- like Bell herself, and the rest of the returning cast members -– is a decade older, and creator Rob Thomas has craftily concocted a mystery around a ten-year high school reunion. Oh, and there are novels now. Close SUBSCRIBE TO & FOLLOW CULTURE SHIFT Every Friday, HuffPost's Culture Shift newsletter helps you figure out which books you should read, art you should check out, movies you should watch and music should listen to. Learn more Newsletter Did Sherlock Holmes retire near Beachy Head? | Beachy Head Did Sherlock Holmes retire near Beachy Head? Did Sherlock Holmes retire near Beachy Head? Posted: 24th January 2012 Category: East Dean , Walks What connects Sherlock Holmes, fictional star of countless adventures and adaptations, to East Dean, the sleepy village that lies a mile from Beachy Head? Well, amateur sleuths have deduced that the famous detective may have retired there. It’s true that the connections are, well, tenuous.

But there are connections, and there is a reasonable case to suggest that East Dean is where Sherlock Holmes retired. Let’s look at the case: Holmes retired to the Downs According to the preface to His Last Bow, Holmes retired to “a small farm upon the Downs, five miles from Eastbourne”. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle knew the area The celebrated author was born nearby, in Crowborough, East Sussex, and is believed to have visited East Dean in later years. Holmes needed a sheltered spot to keep bees Bees like shelter, which rules out a number of potential retirement spots. The village of East Dean, sheltered from the coastal gales, is still a contender. The Sherlock Holmes Society puts him in the area Well, to be precise, a former Chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London reckoned that a house on the village Green opposite the old Farm (New House Farm) was a plausible location for Holmes’ retirement. So when you next explore Beachy Head – or notice the blue plaque announcing the spot of Holmes’ retirement – ask yourself if East Dean might indeed be the place where Doyle retired his fictional hero.

Or try the Sherlock Holmes walk: Sherlock Holmes walk (6km) It starts at Sherlock Holmes’ retirement home and follows the route through Friston Church and the grave stone marked “washed ashore”. Then follow a route over the South Downs, through the old smuggling village of Crowlink (famous for Crowlink gin) and on to the chalk cliffs on the coastline, returning via the red barn and then back to East Dean. These are the footsteps Sherlock Holmes may have taken when he was out studying his bees and when he met Mary Russell and his adventures with her began. Read more about Sherlock Holmes’ retirement . View a map of the Sherlock Holmes walk (tick the Sherlock Holmes walk on the list). Share this page The Mystery of 221B Baker Street | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Contact Privacy Policy Terms of Use The Mystery of 221B Baker Street Our series on Design and Sherlock Holmes begins with an investigation into the location of the famous detective's London flat smithsonian.com July 18, 2012 Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson drawn by Sidney Paget in The Adventure of Silver Blaze (image: Sidney Paget, Wikimedia commons) The Game is afoot, dear reader.

For today, Design Decoded starts its newest series as the world turns its eyes to London for the Olympics: Design and Sherlock Holmes. Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the incomparable consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his intrepid assistant Doctor John Watson made their debut in A Study in Scarlet , published in 1887 in the the pages of Beeton’s Christmas Annual. Though the last canonical adventure of Holmes and Watson was published in 1927, Sherlock Holmes is still an international cultural icon. In fact, he may be more popular today than ever before. The zeitgeist is saturated with all things Holmesian: two Hollywood films ; a recent BBC television series ; another forthcoming series for American television ; and then there are the countless television shows, plays, and films inspired by the adventures of Holmes and Watson. Indeed, we can perhaps trace the entire “buddy-cop” genre back to Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective duo. Let us begin our series today by stalking down the gas-lit streets of Victorian London , and turning our magnifying glass toward an architecture that was defined by Holmes and Watson and poses something of a mystery itself: their London flat at 221B Baker Street.

Baker Street circa 1890 (original image: George Washginton Bacon’s New Map of London, via wikimedia commons) The mystery of 221B Baker Street is not one of secret passages or hidden symbols. Rather, it could be described as a sort of existential spatial riddle: how can a space that is not a space be where it is not? According to Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson lived at 221B Baker Street from 1881 to 1904. But 221B Baker street did not exist in 1881, nor did it exist in 1887 when A Study in Scarlet was published and Baker Street house numbers only extended into the 100s. It was a purely fictional address – emphasis on was. Time marches on, Baker Streets are renumbered, and 221Bs are revealed. The Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street (image: © The Sherlock Holmes Museum ) If you visit 221B Baker Street today you’ll find the Sherlock Holmes Museum , which was opened in 1990 by the Sherlock Holmes International Society.

But the Sherlock Holmes museum is not, technically speaking, located at 221 Baker Street. In fact, there is still no 221 Baker Street. Since the 1930s, the famous address has been lumped in as part of a larger block of buildings originally occupied by the Abbey National Building Society. From almost the day the Abbey National opened they began receiving letters from all over the world addressed to Mr. Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street. Such a profusion of letters were delivered that the bank’s public relations department found it necessary to employ a full-time secretary charged with responding to the urgent inquiries from those in need of Holmes’s unique deductive prowess (these inquiries were usually met with a response that the detective had retired to keep bees in Sussex). When the Sherlock Holmes Museum opened at 239 Baker Street in a Georgian townhouse that likely bears a close resemblance to Conan Doyle’s imagined 221 Baker street, there emerged a dispute over which business should receive the letters. The new museum argued that they were better equipped to respond to the inquiries while the Abbey National presumably wanted to continue their accidental role as the secretary to a fictional detective.

The debate lasted more than a decade and was not resolved until 2002, when the Abbey National vacated their building and the Royal Mail finally agreed to deliver all letters addressed to 221B Baker Street to the museum at 239 Baker Street. The Sherlock Holmes Museum, which includes a full replica of Holmes’s flat, was also allowed by special permission of the City of Westminster, to bear the address 221B – although its physical location is still found between 237 and 241. To recap: a fictional flat in a real city has been made a reality at a fictional address in the real city near the real address of the fictional flat. Confused yet? The controversy doesn’t end there. The fact that there is no real 221 Baker Street has not stopped literary historians from speculating about which Baker Street building Doyle used as his proxy for the home of Holmes and Watson. By closely reading the texts, scholars have proposed multiple Baker Street addresses as a possible inspiration for the literary 221, yet there is no definitive answer. Equally vexing is the design and furnishing of the famous flat itself.

When the Baker Street flat is introduced in A Study in Scarlet, the rooms receive little attention other than the note that they meet the needs of Messrs. Holmes and Watson and consist of “a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows.” There are other equally brief descriptions scattered throughout Holmes canon, but usually nothing more than a few words. Yet from these scant clues, dedicated collectors around the world have been inspired to reconstruct their own versions of 221B. The Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street (image: © The Sherlock Holmes Museum) Perhaps the most visited replica of 221B is the aforementioned recreation at the Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street, which promises visitors that “the interior has been faithfully maintained for posterity exactly as described in the published stories.” The Museum flat may also be the most complete of the many 221Bs, as it includes Watson’s bedroom on the second floor whereas most reconstructions focus solely on Holmes’s sitting room. “Visitors can sit in Mr Holmes’s armchair by the fireside to pose for photos, and enter his bedroom adjoining the study; but please bring your own pipe to smoke!

His possessions are in their usual places: his deerstalker, magnifying glass, calabash pipe, violin, chemistry equipment, notebook, Persian slipper and disguises.” In this sitting room, visitors will find the original wicker chair referenced by famed Holmes illustrator Sidney Paget in his portrayal of the seated detective. In a sense, it could be argued that this chair is Holmes’s chair. But while the flat includes many recognizable Holmesian artifacts and ephemera, certain inferences must be made to complete the fictional Victorian setting. Such a replica is essentially an architecture of deduction – a physical manifestation of Sherlock Holmes’s signature art form. But unlike Holmes’s brilliant deductions, the answer is never certain. The pipe and magnifying glass, the many newspapers and books and test tubes – these things are an index of the life of Sherlock Holmes. But the wallpaper selection, choice of period furniture, the selection of books on Holmes’s shelves – these are pure extrapolations that reflect that taste, style, and opinions of the collector. Indeed, when it comes to the mystery of 221B Baker Street, there are as many deductions as there are detectives.

221B Baker Street at the Sherlock Holmes Pub (image: The Sherlock Holmes Pub) If you’re in the mood for enjoying a pint while viewing a recreation of 221B, you’ll want to head over to The Sherlock Holmes Pub in London, which has the honor of housing the first collection of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia. Originally assembled for an exhibition in 1951 as part of the the Festival of Britain, the pub’s collection includes the desk and chair used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write many of the Holmes adventures, as well as a chair that belonged to Paget. The pub also claims to be a part of Holmesian lore itself – specifically, the site where the detective tracked down a suspect in “ The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor .” Not only that, but it stands in close proximity to other prominent locations frequented by Holmes and Watson. “Old Scotland Yard is just across the other side of Northumberland Avenue, and the Turkish baths that Holmes and Watson used to enjoy were right beside the Hotel. It is still possible in fact to see the entrance, which now forms part of the wall of the bank in Craven Passage.

With Charing Cross Station immediately beside the pub, one can just imagine the duo dashing off to catch a train into the countryside on one of their hair raising adventures!” The Sherlock Holmes Museum in Meiringen, Switzerland (image: Catherine Batac Walder and Mike Walder, via Fine Books & Collections) Just as the adventures of Holmes and Watson sometimes took them out of London to exotic locales around the world, the same holds true for their surprisingly mobile flat. Another replica of 221B Baker Street is located in The Sherlock Holmes Museum at Meiringen , Switzerland near the Reichenbach Falls, the site of the climactic final battle between Holmes and his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty. The Meiringen Museum claims to have the largest collection of Holmes ephemera, as well as the most accurate reproduction of the famed sitting room, reconstructed by Tony Howlett, former President of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and architect John Reid. Its windows are authentic to the era, made in London and shipped to Switzerland; the wallpaper is designed after an 1890s pattern and was bought on High Street in London; the fireplace, oil lamps, and other Holmesian paraphernalia are all authentic Victorian antiques.

221B at the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Lucens, Switzerland (image: The Reichenbach Irregulars ) There is another 221B replica at another Sherlock Holmes museum in Switzerland, an older one established in 1965 at a hotel in Lucens , which was frequently visited by Conan Doyle’s son. It’s interesting to note that all these 221Bs have been purposely arranged to look as if Holmes and Watson had left only moments ago. It seems as if pipe smoke should still be lingering in the air. Looking at the scattered newspapers, books, and teacups, one can imagine the detective springing up from his chair, hot on the heels of a suspect or following a new lead. The carefully curated disarray suggests an unknown narrative, a new mystery for readers to imagine. The 221B Room at the University of Minnesota (image: still from The University of Minnesota Videos) Yet another 221B can be found across the ocean on the fourth floor of the Wilson Library at the University of Minnesota , which also has the distinct honor of being home to the world’s largest collection of ephemera related to Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle.

“The 221B Room,” as it is known, was donated by the estate of Holmes collector Allen Mackler, who painstakingly recreated Holmes’s sitting room in his own home using authentic period artifacts. Mackler’s room was then moved piece-by-piece to the University library. The 221B room at the home of Allen Mackler (image: The University of Minnesota Libraries) There are surely many other partially reconstructed 221Bs in the homes of private collectors around the world. And then there are the myriad sets built for film and television, some of which loyally followed Conan Doyle’s text in the crafting. These replicas, especially those that have been relocated, call to mind a similar reconstruction, Julia Child’s kitchen in the American History Museum, which was painstakingly moved from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts – cabinets, appliances, cookbooks, kitchen table, utensils, gadgets and all. Visitors to Julia’s kitchen (though the exhibition is currently closed for renovation) get a sense for how she worked, how she lived, and what she was like as a person. Architecture and interior spaces are records of our lives; they are extensions of our own identities.

In the same way that visitors to Julia’s kitchen gain new insight into the life of the famous chef, the visitors to one of Sherlock’s many flats can gain insight into the proclivities of the famous detective and his life in Victorian London. There is, of course, one major difference between Julia’s kitchen and Holmes’s sitting room: Julia Child is a real person. Her kitchen in the Smithsonian was her real kitchen. It is a real space. Holmes’s flat, on the other hand, was not. It can’t properly be called a “replica” or “reconstruction” because it never truly existed. Instead, the many 221Bs could more properly be considered a simulacrum—unless you’re a Sherlockian abiding by the rules of the Game, in which case the study is very much a recreation of a true place. The Game is a sort of friendly competition among Holmes scholars, created to explain the many inconsistencies in Conan Doyle’s quickly-written stories using Sherlock’s own methods of deduction. Timothy J.

Johnson of the University of Minnesota explained one of the most important rules of the Game in a correspondence with a peer who was critical of his intent to create a “replica” of a fictional space: “According to the rules of the Game, Holmes is considered a real person, who has never died (no obituary having appeared in The Times), and Doyle is merely the ‘literary agent’….One looks at all the descriptions of the room as provided in the stories and creates a replica. There’s a whole little industry in the Holmesian world that has spent time and ink describing the exact location of 221B Baker Street and the contents of the room.” By the logic of the game, those Sherlockians looking for the Arthur Conan Doyle’s inspiration for 221B are, in fact, searching for the true apartments of Holmes and Watson, which were obviously disguised in Watson’s “memoirs” with a false address. The line between fiction and reality is blurred for the most ardent fans of Sherlock Holmes. While it can be argued that the non-Baker Street flats are less authentic, in that they exist independently from their historical context, it could also just as easily be argued that there is no real historical context.

After all, 221B Baker Street does not now exist, nor has it ever existed. These replicas are all, to one degree or another, authentic recreations. But is any 221B more authentic than another? How does a non-Game-player measure the authenticity of a place that isn’t real? By location? By how closely it resembles the sparse descriptions and illustrations in the original text? Or perhaps by the authenticity of the Victorian antiques used in crafting the reproduction? As a real manifestation of a fiction, the many 221Bs attest to the power of Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing. So strongly do the Holmes stories resonate with our culture that we have manifested his home in our own reality, creating shrines and sites of pilgrimage across the world. But these “replicas” also attest to the power of architecture and interior design, which by their very nature make things real. Every building and space is a manifestation of narratives that results from a confluence of theories, politics, cultural beliefs, pragmatic necessities and opinions. But not only is the built environment a manifestation of these narratives, it’s also a venue for new narratives. Stories are an inherent part of the architectural process.

The reconstructions of Sherlock Holmes’s flat at 221B Baker Street just makes that much more explicit. Like this article? A Beginner's Guide to The Sherlock Fandom, Sherlock Loves Bees Archive Sherlock Loves Bees Though there is generally more subtlety to this meme than others, it is arguably one of the “oldest” Sherlock memes, as it is based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle canon and long-time Sherlock Holmes fans have been making reference to it for decades. The origin of the meme is in the Sherlock Holmes story “His Last Bow,” in which Doyle reveals that Sherlock, in his retirement years, moved to Sussex and took up beekeeping with the same fervor that he had once had for detective work. When asked about his hobby by Dr. Watson, Mr. Holmes had this to say: “Exactly, Watson. Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years.” He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, “‘Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen.’ Alone I did it.

Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days, when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London.” This propensity for apiology has never been mentioned in the BBC series, but the fandom seems to have tracked it down anyway. The most popular application of the bee meme to the BBC series is to color John’s stripey jumper yellow and make some exclamation about him looking like a bee and therefore incurring Sherlock’s interest (sometimes sexually). Examples to follow. 224 notes Sherlock Holmes bees beekeeper honey bee SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE BEES Author: Revati We all know that bees play a vital role in pollinating plants, and that they produce tasty honey and some other products (propolis, beeswax, royal jelly). The most famous detective of the world also had an interest in the tiny insects, after his retirement (at age forty-nine) he kept bees in Sussex. The history of bees and beekeeping – a short overview Bees appeared in many famous authors’ work, thanks to their diligence and their social life – the latter was used as a model for human society as well.

Among many others Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, Seneca, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Marx mentioned them in their writings. The Merovings used the bee as their royal emblem – the animal symbolized immortality and resurrection. Bees were sacred in many cultures, it was a common belief that they connect the natural world and the underworld. According to Egyptian mythology bees were born from the teardrops of sun god Ra falling to desert sand. Bees can live a solitary life or they can be a part of a highly organized society. Honey bees live in so-called eusocial colonies – it consists of the mother (the queen), of fertile males and of sterile females (the workers). There are around twenty thousand known bee species, the most well-known is the European honey bee (Apis mellifera). They can be found in every continent except Antarctica. They are specialized in consuming nectar and pollen. The honey they produce is not just a tasty food, but it can be used in medicine too – sterilized honey is a disinfectant and it helps wounds heal faster. Honey bees are diligent and useful helpers of beekeepers. At the moment there are seven known species and forty-four subspecies of honey bees.

Their origin can be traced back to South and Southeast Asia. Beekeepers keep their bee families in hives, and in one hive there may be up to forty thousand animals. At the beginning of beekeeping it was impossible to collect honey without the destruction of the bees and the whole hive. People later realized what a valuable resource a hive with its inhabitants is. During the middle ages monasteries and abbeys became the centres of beekeeping. Beeswax was used for making candles, while from fermented honey mead was made in areas of Europe where wines would not grow. In the 19th century the American Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth perfected the movable comb hive what made possible the removal of the combs without the destruction of the eggs, larvae or pupae. Several hive designs exist, in America the most dominant is the Langstroth and the Dadant hive, while in the UK a British National Standard Hive is the most popular. Apart from traditional beekeeping there are some other ways or trends as well, such as natural and urban beekeeping – the latter means that the hives are on the top of modern city buildings. It is worth to mention that urban beekeeping appears in Elementary (More intormation: CBS Elementary ).

Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes has his hives on the roof of his house, and he even names a new subspecies after Watson. Originally there were some beekeeping scenes in Granada’s Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett, but unfortunately only some photos remained from these, they were not shown (You can read about the legendary Sherlock Holmes actor here: Jeremy Brett ). Sherlock and the bees The sleuth himself remarks in The Lion’s Mane that he keeps bees („I, my old housekeeper, and my bees have the estate all to ourselves.”). Anyway, this story is the second that shows the events from Holmes’ view – the first one is The Blanched Soldier. Sherlock’s new activity is also indicated in His Last Bow, when he proudly shows Watson his magnum opus („Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen.”). It may be strange for many that how could a man who spent many years with catching dangerous criminals and avoiding scandals choose such a seemingly boring hobby like keeping bees. At first sight the two activities are as different as chalk and cheese. But when we examine the problem more thoroughly, it turns out that sleuthing and beekeeping have several things in common.

Let’s see those characteristics that one needs for both. 1. Patience Searching for details, evidence and checking facts are necessary during an investigation, and one needs a lot of patience to do them. You also have to be patient to observe bees and care for them. 2. Taking responsibility An investigation may save lives, and a beekeeper is also responsible for the well-being of his/her bees. 3. Preparedness A good detective tries to collect as much data as he/she can in order to make his/her work easier. You cannot start keeping bees without knowing at least the basics. 4. Perseverance No activity can be effective without it. If it is given, the detective surely solves the case, and the beekeeper can collect the precious honey. My opinion is that Holmes found the perfect pastime for his retired ages in keeping bees. He spent many years in almost constant danger, often under trying circumstances both for his body and his mind. For him observing the life of his bees and caring for them was definitely a sheer relaxation – something that he truly deserved after so many solved mysteries. " Sherlock Holmes and the bees " Author: Revati Celebrity Beekeepers | List of famous people | Who2 Celebrity Beekeepers These People Had Hives!

Bees seem to fascinate almost everyone. Here are some famous people who have actually kept bees for fun or profit. Aristotle Greek philosopher ARISTOTLE was famed for his observations of nature, including bees from his own hives. Though not always perfectly accurate, Aristotle’s observations were for many years the basis of western knowledge about the animal kingdom. In his text A History of Animals Aristotle describes drones and ruler bees (though he calls them kings rather than queens), the order of a hive, and the making of honey. Sir Edmund Hillary SIR EDMUND HILLARY ‘s father Percival was a journalist who gave up the newspaper business to become a professional beekeeper. His sons joined Percival in the family business, but a passion for mountaineering claimed ever more of Edmund’s time. After becoming the first man to conquer Mount Everest, Edmund Hillary gave up beekeeping entirely in favor of further explorations and advocacy for the Sherpas, the people of his Everest climbing partner Tensing Norgay.

Henry Fonda Actor HENRY FONDA was an amateur beekeeper who reportedly gave friends jars labelled “Henry’s Honey.” The beekeeping connection was reinforced when Fonda’s son Peter won an Academy Award nomination for playing a beekeeper in the 1997 movie Ulee’s Gold. In an interview that year with the Toronto Sun, Peter Fonda reported “My dad kept a few hives… He had been a boy scout and an eagle scout and a scout master — as an eagle scout he had all the badges, one of them was for beekeeping… He had the veil, the whole beekeeper outfit.” Martha Stewart Lifestyle expert and media mogul MARTHA STEWART says she’s been keeping bees since the 1970s. Not only do they enhance the flowers and fruit trees in her garden, they make honey, and that’s a good thing.

Stewart advises her readers to put the hives in the back of the yard, “away from young children and domestic animals,” to “avoid wearing perfume” and, if it’s your first time working with bees, to “get an expert’s help.” Sherlock Holmes According to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , fictional detective SHERLOCK HOLMES retired to Sussex, England and amused himself by keeping bees. In His Last Bow (1917), Holmes’s friend Dr. Watson tells him “We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs.” In reply Holmes shows off a book he has authored, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen, saying, “Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London.” Alexander the Great Honorable Mention: Aristotle’s pupil ALEXANDER THE GREAT didn’t keep bees, but he ended up having a close relationship with honey. After his death in Babylon during a military campaign, Alexander’s body was placed in a gold coffin filled with honey for return to Macedon.

The body was intercepted by Alexander’s old friend Ptolemy, who took it to Alexandria, Egypt, where it was eventually entombed. Wanted dead or alive: Why do fictional sleuths keep coming out of retirement? | The Independent Wanted dead or alive: Why do fictional sleuths keep coming out of retirement? Saturday 26 April 2014 22:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture Dr Watson has a new life of his own, without Holmes, thanks to Robert Ryan Hulton Archive With something like 600 new crime novels and thrillers published in the UK each year, including a seemingly endless supply of Viking invaders from the Scandinavian countries, you might have thought there would be no shortage of fresh and innovative (though naturally quirky and vulnerable) fictional detectives. Yet it seems that readers – and perhaps more importantly writers – are harking back to the past and reviving some of the great characters from the genre’s highly impressive backlist. Fictional detectives rarely go gently into the night, despite their creators trying to kill them off. Sherlock Holmes may have taken a fatal dive off the Reichenbach Falls, but Arthur Conan Doyle was forced by public demand to bring him back.

Even after he retired to Sussex and bee-keeping and his creator died in 1930, Holmes’s career continues prolifically at the hands of others – many, many others – as well as the official “continuation” by Anthony Horowitz. In the past year, the thriller writer Robert Ryan has continued the career of Dr John Watson, putting him centre stage, sans Holmes, in two best-selling crime novels set during the First World War. James Bond, of course, keeps on serving Queen and country. Almost three times as many Bond books have been written since the death of Ian Fleming in 1964 than were written by Fleming himself, and they are today an annual event, penned by a series of high-profile guest authors. The most recent revival is that of Raymond Chandler’s iconic private eye Philip Marlowe in The Black-Eyed Blonde by the Man Booker Prize-winner John Banville, writing under his crime-writing alias Benjamin Black, but now Marlowe faces stiff competition from not one, but three of the great heroes from Britain’s Golden Age of detective fiction.

Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot cracked his first case in 1920; Dorothy L Sayers’ aristocratic amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey floated elegantly on to the crime scene in 1922; and Margery Allingham’s even more aristocratic (as the author cheekily hinted) gentleman adventurer, Albert Campion, debuted in 1929. These heroes, created by the three “Queens of Crime”, are all undergoing revivals in their sleuthing careers. Lord Peter Wimsey (now the Duke of Denver) is still investigating crimes and misdemeanours in an Oxford college in 1953 in The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh. Albert Campion is contemplating retirement as well as mysterious goings on in a quaint Suffolk wool town in 1969 in my novel, Mr Campion’s Farewell. And Hercule Poirot will no doubt be exercising those famous little grey cells in a new novel sanctioned by the Christie estate by Sophie Hannah, to be published in September.

Sequels, prequels and updated “re-imaginings” are not new phenomena in publishing, and certainly not confined to crime fiction, but the current crop of “continuations” of the careers of much-loved fictional detectives illustrates the importance of the series hero in the genre. Is it possible that the series characters of 60 or even a 100 years ago are more attractive and accessible than today’s fictional heroes and heroines? Is it nostalgia and a rose-tinted view of life before Twitter and texting made alibis rather more difficult to hack into? Or could modern technology be fuelling the revivalist movement? The crime writer and critic, Jessica Mann, believes that, thanks to new ways of reading via electronic downloads, “people are discovering books and series of books that might have seemed fusty and time-expired in a public library or second-hand bookshop, and enjoying them because they are good.

Also, I’d guess, because they are such a welcome contrast to contemporary crime fiction’s ever-increasing sadism.” Devotees of crime fiction – the most-borrowed category from public libraries – are undoubtedly devotees of the long-running series, and dedicated fans never want to feel that “their” characters have come to the end of the line with the demise of the author. They like to hope that there is a life for them beyond the canon. Indeed, fans speak reverentially of “the Holmes canon” or “the Christie canon”. On the announcement that she was to continue adding to the impressive Poirot canon (more than 30 novels and dozens of short stories), Sophie Hannah said: “I know some people will say, ‘Once a writer’s dead, leave their characters alone.’ But so many famous dead writers are having this done – James Bond, Sherlock Holmes – it becomes a kind of weird omission if Agatha Christie doesn’t have that done for her. It almost feels it needs to be done. I think it is great that beloved characters from fiction don’t have to die.” Yet reviving much-loved characters can be a tricky business for the “continuation” author.

“It’s not so much that endearing characters aren’t being created today; it’s an abiding affection for characters that, perhaps, were influential in your own reading history,” says Rob Ryan, who is now establishing a Dr Watson series. “The downside is that many readers want their favourite character to be set in aspic – you play about with him or her at your peril. Rather than pastiche the originals I feel I have been able to bring something fresh to the character without, I hope, alienating the Holmes and Watson aficionados too much. Pastiche, or “literary ventriloquism”, as it is sometimes rather snobbishly termed, is a sensitive topic among continuation authors, who all declare a personal affinity with the original source material. “It’s not ventriloquism,” Benjamin Black/John Banville told the BBC’s Front Row last month. “I don’t parrot the style [of Chandler], I try to write in the spirit of it.” He is not the first to try. In 1989, the late Robert B Parker adopted the Chandler/Marlowe continuation mantle, but clearly felt happier dealing with his own characters, and especially his Boston private eye series hero Spenser.

Today, his Spenser series is itself being continued in America by the crime writer Ace Atkins. Evelyn Waugh advised aspiring writers never to kill off a good character, as good characters are so difficult to create. But can contemporary crime fiction be so bereft of good characters that readers are turning back the clock to enjoy the continuing exploits of their now ageing heroes from a more gentle age? True, much of today’s crime-writing is plot-driven (though no longer simply “whodunit?”) and very violent in comparison, and it is difficult to see where the next generation of Wimseys, Campions and Poirots is to come from. Is it feasible that in 50 or 100 years somebody will be continuing the adventures of Jack Reacher or Inspector John Rebus? Well yes, it probably is. After all, you just can’t keep a good character down. Mike Ripley is an award-winning crime writer who has completed the unfinished Albert Campion novel left on the death of Youngman Carter (Margery Allingham’s widower) in 1969.

Sophie Hannah, Jill Paton Walsh, Robert Ryan, and Mike Ripley will discuss the appeal of continuing crime fiction at this year’s Crimefest convention in Bristol on Friday 16 May

Question: Which fictional detective retired to keep bees?
Answer: Sherlock Holmes